Is there an easy way to make the Linux fortune teller to display Wikiquote's quote? Shouldn't this be a good idea? Let me know what you think.BrokenClock 16:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

It's a useful idea, but Wikiquote's structure, based on the wiki article system, doesn't really provide a practical way to select single quotations. Programmers are welcome to create their own systems to grab Wikiquote data, so long as they give credit to the source per GFDL. However, they'll find that the variable formats of quotes from the many different kinds of sources, combined with the wiki need to keep editing as simple as possible, makes this extremely difficult.

Since this question comes up periodically, I've added it (and the simple answer) to Wikiquote:FAQ. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 20:21, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

One reason my suggested suggested guidelines are so strict is so this will be easier in the future. As wikiquote's competitors use fully-fledged databases, I believe we should use every bit we do have to "simulate" a database. Which is a roundabout way of getting more people to comment on these guidelines! ~ MosheZadka(Talk) 22:40, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

This would have been nice, if not for the fact that MediaWiki does not perform well with massive amounts of template usage. This would break down fast, and quotations are not that hard to format correctly manually (it's just a bullet/subbullet). ~ MosheZadka(Talk) 20:54, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Understandable... I was just looking at an option which would make it easier to maintain a standard, and, if that standard was to change at a later stage, provide an option to easily implement that change globally. Kind of like a wiki version of CSS...

Oh well, back to the drawing boards... -Lucanos 11:08, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Is it just me or has the Wikiquote logo disappeared? I haven't seen it for the last few hours. - dcljr 14:06, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that, too. I don't recall what image we're using, or by what mechanism it gets rendered on the page, so it's not clear to me where the problem is. I found at least 2 Wikiquote images on Commons, but I don't know if either is what we use. ~ Jeffq 16:26, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

The occupations: commedians link on the front page directs to this instead of this (wiki links are case-sensitive) SoGonzo 17:10, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe that this whole set of "List of people by occupation" links from the main page should probably be removed now, as the page is largely obsolete, and has long been so. The use of links by Categories is now the standard method of creating such "occupation" lists. ~ Kalki 18:03, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

It would take all of, say, ten seconds to fix the link that I commented on nineteen days ago. Yet, I see that it still remains untouched. Glad to see that the mods are doing such a great job over here at wikiquote. </sarcasm> SoGonzo 18:22, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Obsolete links now removed, as I proposed was probably appropriate nineteen days ago. ~ Kalki 20:56, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Why are some words in quotes bolded and others not? Is it the emphasis the Quotee(the one who said/wrote it) or of the quoter(the one who quotes it)? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.239.230.5 (talk • contribs) 01:24, 16 April 2006 (UTC) (UTC)

In its infancy, the Wikiquote community decided to allow editors to bold their favorite quotes in an article. I'm not so sure this makes sense in a much larger community. It certainly makes it difficult to tell whether the original had the bolding in it. (I expect that bolding is almost always an Wikiquotian's choice, not part of the original text.)

On the other hand, I finally took the time to find a en:Wikiquote stats page, and it claims that, as of December 2005, we had only 427 users who made at least 10 edits since arriving, only 35 who made 5 edits in the entire month, and only 4 of us who made more than 100 edits in that time. (I estimate we have over 8,000 registered users, so it looks like the vast majority of people are registering simply to establish an identity here.) This goes a long way toward explaining why (A) we haven't had any noticeable conflict over what should be bolded, and (B) why it sometimes takes quite a while to get responses to questions, let alone fixes to problems. For those who would like to be big fish in a small pond (as opposed to Wikipedia, which is a veritable ocean at this point), might I suggest that you can have a tremendous impact on Wikiquote with only a modest effort? ~ Jeff Q(talk) 05:08, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I am reluctant to simply add another link to a proverbs article. We currently have 100 proverbs articles, and nearly half of them are listed on the main page. This is at least an order of magnitude more than any other category. I support adding Hebraic proverbs, just like those from other ancient tongues like Chinese or Egyptian, but I would first want to remove at least a dozen others to bring the proverbs section into line. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 18:02, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

This is far from the only problem with proverbs articles. Not a one of them (that I've noticed) has any sourcing whatsoever, so we have no ready way to discover whether people are just making them up. Many of them include large tracts of untranslated text that English Wikiquote readers can't hope to read. Without sources, we must rely on single individuals to provide translations and have no way to verify them, either. Many proverbs articles are a mess, and some (e.g., Indonesian proverbs and Malay proverbs) have significant overlap. With all these problems, I feel we shouldn't be giving proverbs more prominence than any other category of quotes. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 18:02, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Please, add eu interwiki in in other lenguages. The text must be [[:eu:|Euskara]] –, wich links to the basque wikiquote (wikiesanak); as you can see here Euskara. Thank you. Barrie 17:54, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I've added it to both of the "in other languages" boxes. —LrdChaos 18:05, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

"Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down furious from the summits of Olympus", and… tweaked an inconveniently protected page to make a simple fix. ☺ Ζητώ συγγνώμη για την παράλειψη (apologies for the omission). ~ Jeff Q(talk) 20:55, 8 May 2006 (UTC), borrowing from The Illiad, Book I

Howcome the Australian editors with the help of some offshore admins are being totally rude and ignorant to new editors and claiming they are using 'sockpuppets' when I had to look up what that was, and am not etc?

Registered user 'Gretaw' has been blocked along with my block when Gretaw is totally absolutely nil to do with me. The admins who did this are either Gretaw or they have attacked a totally not involved reg wik user.

Whatever, the go at me on wikipedia has been pretty disgusting and bad form wik that you allow this bully stuff to happen on your site. Check out that Gretaw stuff and what Thatcher131, Golden Wattle, Longhair/Durova, and any other whinney ones - oh I forgot the pompous Sarah Uhart. There was the spree slope Grahame something also.

This appears to about a situation on Wikipedia that has nothing to do with Wikiquote. The usernames listed are Wikipedia users, and 203.54.9.127's only edit here has been this post. 203.54.9.127, please discuss Wikipedia issues on Wikipedia. If you have problems with particular wiki users, there are many forums there in which to bring these up to get attention and assistance from other wikians, especially with administrators. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 05:06, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Please put a link to the Simple English Wikiquote. The purpose of the Simple English Wikiquote is to present quotes in original English along with explanations or translations/glosses in Simple English (example: William Shakespeare) to help anyone who has trouble understanding the original English for a variety of reasons: native English speakers who have trouble with archaic vocabulary and grammatical structure; people learning English who would prefer to think in English (or at least Simple English) while learning to understand the English quotes; people who are unsure which of two interpretations of the quote is the right one; people who, for one reason or another, have difficulty reading English but can manage to read Simple English -- that includes some children, people learning to read, some people with learning disabilities and some people such as some Deaf people who may have difficulties learning to read written languages -- often for the Deaf, a sign language is their native language and may have no written form, and reading a language such as English is difficult because without having heard the sounds, an alphabet is rather meaningless so each word has to be memorized, and the word order differs from their native language. Simple Englsh Wikiquote needs more contributors. Please include a link in the interwikis on the left and/or the "other languages" section on the right of the main page. Thank you. --Coppertwig 04:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

If you don't have room to list all the Wikiquotes, please put a link to a complete list of Wikiquotes. thank you. --Coppertwig 04:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This should be a no-brainer, as Jesus is unquestionably a notable historical figure. But I'd rather bring up the significant problem with we have with these main page links at this point. As with other Wikimedia projects, we protect the main page from editing by anyone but administrators because of expected regular vandalism of this highly visible page. But we do not have any regular scheme, like Wikipedia does, for determining what links should be on the main page, nor do we have enough regular editors to establish such a system. Even en:Wikipedia puts the decision in the hands of a single person, and I worry that no one may want to step up to this reponsibility, which is a lot more work and trouble than it may sound. (Just ask Kalki about the fun he's had with "Quote of the day" selection. ☺) I have no suggestions at this time, but I felt it important to raise the issue here at least. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 23:03, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I just added Jesus and several others to the section, removed a few, and got rid of the rather over-extended Proverbs section — which are not generally among our best pages, relegating a single link to them to the "Categories" section. ~ Kalki 04:54, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

No. It is a label given to the unknown origin of some famous quotes. "Anonymous" is also not a substitute for the originator of unfamous quotes, as many Wikiquote editors seem to think. I would ask everyone not to add their own quotes, or quotes without some measure of reliably-sourced fame, to Anonymous, or to any other article and attribute them to "Anonymous". ~ Jeff Q(talk) 22:56, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm new to Wikiquote, so obviously not an admin here and can't edit the Main Page. But, noticed a link to Martin Luther King on the Main Page, which redirects to Martin Luther King, Jr. I think the link on the main page should be changed to Martin Luther King, Jr. to avoid this redirect and give his proper name. Aude 22:25, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

We try to make main-page links as short as they can reasonably be, to keep the sizes of these link sections down and maximize their content. Martin Luther King, Jr. is commonly known without the "Jr.", and it is acceptable English practice to drop the "Jr." for Jrs. whose Srs. are deceased (as I know from familial experience). That said, there's no reason we can't fix the redirect without affecting the shorter link label. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 23:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

What's the goal/criteria for the people section? After spending a couple weeks around the site on a personal quote project, I don't think this list does a very good job representing either a) the people with the best quotes or b) the people with the best pages (formatting, pictures, etc). It seems more like a smattering of variety for variety's sake. Personally, I think criteria (a) wins out... great quotes can be jazzed up with pics/formatting, but great pics/formatting don't guarantee great quotes.

So my idea is to take 2 representatives from each category... and where possible use 1 "older" person and 1 "newer" person. That said, here's my take on the list:

There aren't a lot of good humor-oriented people represented here. The best ancient comedian was Aristophanes, but he doesn't have a page. Adams is excellent for the modern humorist. The second one... Yogi Berra?

The one "older" name that towers with respect in the realm of poetry (for native English) is John Milton. I'm honestly in shock that he wasn't on the list. Shelley's page is excellent and a perfect candidate for the "newer" (native English) poet. Taking those 2 also gives us a balance of 1 being religiously themed, and the other secular.

I like Voltaire's stuff, but 2 things hold it back. First he wrote in French. Second, his page is a bit skimpy. We can keep him or else replace him with Samuel Johnson as our "older" wit. Johnson's page is excellent, long, and he's native English. For a modern wit, I challenge anyone to find a more brilliant, more quotable character than G. K. Chesterton.

Current list has 6. Was this done simply so we don't leave anyone's religion out? Anyway, we don't need the clutter. I like the content on Confucius and Laozi best (Jesus said great things, but just about everyone already knows what he said). I don't know of any "modern" religions that are of quality substance, so we'll stick with the 2 Chinese guys.

The three current pages seriously aren't that interesting. (The Darwin one is especially lacking; about all you find there are a jumble of statement on whether or not he really thinks there is a God.) I say keep Einstein as the modern scientist, and add an Enlightenment scientist, Pascal, who happens to be a universal genius and one of the most quotable people ever .

The current list has Thomas Paine, who would be an acceptable older figure. But I think that Abraham Lincoln would be better. And let's reach across the Atlantic for the modern figure: Winston Churchill... it's extremely hard to beat his quotes.

I must note that not a single woman would remain on your "fine, balanced list", and I believe Helen Keller, Emily Brontë and Starhawk should all remain. I had even considered adding Sappho for the ancients, Emily Dickinson, and George Eliot, as also very notable women authors, but have refrained thus far, simply to help keep the list relatively small.

There has never been a stated goal or criteria for the people section and it originally developed with input from various people. There can be endless debates on who is most worthy of placement on the main page, which is one reason I for a long time was content to simply let what had been posted there in the early stages of the project remain. To the extent I have edited it, I have sought to include a diversity of figures. I recently added Jesus to the page because I agreed with a suggestion that he should not be omitted, and simultaneously added several other leaders of religious and secular thought. I considered removing Leary then, while removing several others, but left him by accident in my first edit, and basically decided to keep him as a representative modern non-conformist whose adage "Question authority" and a few others were worthy of note. His is the one name youv'e listed I would most be inclined to drop from the list, as the page has only a few profoundly notable quotes, but I cannot agree with the disparaging comments that imply his statements are unworthy of attention or consideration.

Keats was added before I ever began editing the main page, and though in his short life he was not as prolific as Shelly in his, some of his lines are among the most famous and notable of English quotes. His page might be improved with some work, but I agree that if we were to remove one of these two Romantics, Shelly should remain.

Of the others you would be inclined to remove I am in greater disagreement.

Dante as much as Milton, and prior to him, greatly molded western notions of heaven and hell, and his is one of the pages I have near the top of my personal list of pages to work on to make more interesting.

T. S. Eliot provided some of the most acclaimed 20th century poetry, and many profoundly thoughtful statements, and I believe strongly his name should remain.

Now that they have been added, I feel retention of the major religious figures is appropriate, as many people are not familiar with even a few of the best statements of major figures from traditions other than their own, nor even of those they might ostensibly embrace. I also believe Starhawk provides an interesting sampling of some of the ideas of those who embrace neo-pagan traditions.

Of the scientists both Feynman and Darwin are highly notable and quotable figures in their fields, and I think both should remain. Darwin especially is often partially quoted by both theists and atheists in ways that alter the apparent context of his statements, and this increases the reasons I would keep his link.

Thomas Paine, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy are all major historical figures who are widely quoted, and the only one of these that I added was Paine, because he especially had a powerful influence on human society that has long been underrated, or ignored beyond a few lines that nearly any student of history knows.

Of the people whose pages you would like to add I can most strongly agree with Chesterton, Milton and Pascal, and most strongly disagree with Yogi Berra whose page remains something of an unsourced mess. I almost added Chesteron among my recent additions and thought of Milton as well, but refrained simply to minimize an English Christian dominance.

I had considered adding both Lincoln and Churchill, as well as Jefferson in my recent additions, but refrained simply in preference of adding other non-English or non-American figures, Voltaire among them. I do not agree that he should be replaced with Samuel Johnson, and would consider adding other foreign language authors Henrik Ibsen or Søren Kierkegaard ahead of Johnson.

I am glad you would keep William Saroyan, as I am rather proud of the work I did on the page for this relatively neglected author, but I only added him as an afterthought and a sudden impulse after dealing with some vandalism on the page that someone created on the Armenian genocide (a page which I hope to have time to clean up a bit within the next few days).

The great Russian novelist and social activist Tolstoy is also extremely notable and influential, and I certainly feel his name should remain.

The Anonymous page is not a bright spot on the wiki, but I feel that it too should probably remain, though I have little hope of it becoming a highly admirable page any time soon, if ever.

In summary, if there is a broad call to do so, from others, I could see removing Leary and perhaps Keats, but have no inclination to remove any others, and the addition of Pascal, Milton, Franklin, Jefferson, Dickens, Lincoln, Tennyson, Churchill, and Chesterton would all be fine with me, but also adding Khalil Gibran and a few non-western figures such as Ramakrishna, Morihei Ueshiba, or Miyamoto Musashi would also be welcome for greater balance.

Personally I would have loved to add Kate Bush to the list as well, but never have, because my bias in regard to her is both extreme and openly confessed, and it is probably best that the names be free of modern musical artists, simply to avoid the intense biases that are common in many people in regard to their favorites. There would be greater fuss than over the religious figures, most likely. ~ Kalki 06:11, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for taking my suggestions seriously. I have to confess that I wrote it at 4:00 AM (my time) after a quite long day... so some of my points did come off more antagonistic than ought to have. That also explains why I overlooked Mark Twain. ;)

It's probably important to realize that there is no perfect list. Any such attempt will be subjective. It seems as though you are quite fond of poetry. Personally, I would like to see a lot more philosophers (I have a degree in philosophy)... the only current representative is Aristotle.

So what's a fair way of compiling this list? How many names do we want? What are our criteria?

I didn't mean to belittle Dante, Tolstoy, Voltaire, etc. by suggesting their removal. I was only suggesting replacements because since this is the English Wikiquote, I think we should feature people who command the English language, and only rely on translations where necessary. For instance, there aren't any thoroughly established religions by Brits or Americans (unless you count denominations like Methodism or Mormonism), so we have to go with a guy who gets translated from Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin, Sanskrit, etc.

Anyway, I'd like to hear what you think is the best criteria to be working under. It won't do any good for us to go back and forth listing our personal favorites (Bon Jovi anyone?), I think we need some kind of system to ensure balance and avoid prejudice. Kindly, Dbergan 04:26, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Technically, English Wikiquote should provide memorable quotes from any subject well-known in the English-speaking world, not just masters of the language. That's why quite a bit of non-English material makes it way into our articles (although should always include have English translations). I believe it's completely appropriate to try to cover many different kinds of people, groups, and subjects, and having a representative sample on the main page would seem logical. (By the way, I'd support Kate Bush as a musician, but like Kalki, I'm a bit biased and must refrain. Besides, like with Enya, I think that much of the power of her performances is lost when reduced to mere text representations. I'd prefer including a modern artist whose impact comes solely through words. Of course, after I added the quote from Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" to Lyrics, people may not find my opinions on modern artists especially worthy. ☺)

Ideally, we could rotate well-rounded, well-formatted articles through main-page groupings. But as I mentioned above in "People - Jesus", this is a major logistical effort that would require a lot of regular community participation, something we aren't quite seeing yet. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 05:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The converse idea would be that people are masters regardless of their language... which has some truth to it. It's pleasant to read a translation of Rousseau, but I have been told that to read and understand the original French is divine. Same goes for Goethe. (Same for Shakespeare.) Anyway, it seems as though the logical conclusion of this converse would be one uniform list of famous people that is the same on each Wikiquote site. If we aren't going to give Churchill precedence over Voltaire, then they shouldn't give Rousseau precedence over Shakespeare.

Ok, now after opining on other Wikiquote sites, I decided to actually check them out. Wikiquote German doesn't seem to have a people category at all. They have "new articles" (Neue Seiten, of which one happens to be Timothy Leary... with all of 2 quotes to his name), "quote of the day," and "portal"... with a "wikiquote" and "person" entry that takes you to categories you can browse. So Shakespeare himself isn't listed, but we can find him via "Personen," "Beruf," "Dichter," "(nächste 200)" "William Shakespeare." Goethe can be found in the same way. (And wow do they have a good page on Goethe.)

Wikiquote French also doesn't have individual people cited on its main page, although it does have a people category ("Citations par métier de la personne citée") and then subcategories. Shakespeare can be accessed easily via "Dramaturge." I also see that they have (shudder) only one Pascal quote. Get to work Wikiquote French!

Seeing it twice now, I think this is actually a really good solution. We needn't scuffle over individual articles if we just link category pages. If I'm in the mood for poetic quotes, I click "poets" rather than "Keats." We ensure balance and remove prejudice by neutrally listing the subjects... that way newcomers don't think we are religious fanatics, navel-gazing poets, strung-out LSD-addicts, or witches. True, it would be ideal to have rotating featured pages, but as you (Jeff) pointed out, I don't think any of us spend enough time here to want to commit to that job. Honestly, I spend about a 1/2 second on the main page... long enough to dial in the author I am seeking. I only started this discussion because I decided to look at it late one night after a long day of working on quotes, and thought, "Hey now! They aren't featuring the good stuff!"

Of course, "good" is subjective... which is why any featured list of people will probably be a lightning rod. Kindly, Dbergan 16:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering why the quote of the day hasn't been updated for a few days - it's still showing the Ethan Allen quote. Tamino 15:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, it seems to have been updated as I was writing. Tamino 15:08, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

This usually means that you are receiving a outdated, cached version of the page which, as you saw, often resolves itself soon enough. If it doesn't, you can usually fix it by forcing a reload in your browser (see w:Wikipedia:Bypass your cache), or in stubborn circumstances, telling the server to purge its cache (see w:Wikipedia:Purge). If the problem remains, then call for help again. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 15:18, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

There is one. It was discontinued for a time because of legal problems caused by a user over-using someone else's copyrighted material, but has now been restored. I will restore its link now. ~ Kalki 03:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The link was already restored on the main page, as I thought it had been. You must have thought there wasn't one from something you read somewhere else. ~ Kalki 03:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello anonymous editor, I assume you visited once [our global portal]? French Wikiquote may be found at "in other languages" section. --Aphaia 07:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I suppose those categoriews were once listed but later removed from Main Page ... I prefer to move those categories from Category:Main page. "Occupations" are redundant since we have "People" section already. --Aphaia 19:26, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

This is a petty complaint, but the text on the logo irritates me - the poor anti-aliasing and little white flecks are unattractive. Is there a way to get consensus about changing the text without a huge procedure on Meta? Alton 02:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello, since the project logo are globally shared, I don't think we may change it locally, hence discussion on meta is inevitable. I recommend you to give a look to m:Talk:Wikiquote. --Aphaia 03:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we should add yogiisms to the Miscellaneous Tab on the wikiquote homepage...anybody have any dissention?

One major problem with the Yogi Berra page at present (as well as quite a few others) is that most of the quotes are unsourced, and further organization is needed of those which do have some citation. Personally I'm not inclined to include a link on the main page, but if there developed a consensus for its inclusion I would add it. Kalki 21:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea why "we should add" it, sorry. --Aphaia 07:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I must agree with Kalki and Aphaia. Even if it were well sourced and better organized, Yogi Berra must compete with other people articles, which are very challenging to select. As far as Berra's infamous malapropisms, many others are famous for this as well, including some whose primary fame is for this. In fact, William Archibald Spooner predates Berra and Norm Crosby (who doesn't even have an article here yet!), and unlike "yogiism", "spoonerism" can be found in most dictionaries, demonstrating much greater fame. There might be an argument for the more general theme of Malapropisms for the main page, if we had such an article. ~ Jeff Q(talk) 07:59, 16 April 2007 (UTC)